Booming Economy --- in <i>Iraq</i>

Iraq is in the midst of civil war, we're told. We've already lost in Iraq, we hear. All that's left is to figure out a graceful exit, the media talking heads solemnly intone. Yet every now and then a dissonant note seeps through the despair and defeatism. Newsweek, of all people, has such a story here. The title? Iraq's Economy is Booming. Given what the MSM report every day who would have thought that?

Civil war or not, Iraq has an economy, and-mother of all surprises-it's doing remarkably well. Real estate is booming. Construction, retail and wholesale trade sectors are healthy, too, according to a report by Global Insight in London. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce reports 34,000 registered companies in Iraq, up from 8,000 three years ago. Sales of secondhand cars, televisions and mobile phones have all risen sharply. Estimates vary, but one from Global Insight puts GDP growth at 17 percent last year and projects 13 percent for 2006. The World Bank has it lower: at 4 percent this year. But, given all the attention paid to deteriorating security, the startling fact is that Iraq is growing at all.

Things in Iraq are not all rosy, of course, but neither is the picture anywhere near as dismal, evidently, as the American public is being led to believe. We can win in Iraq. It just takes a little more steel in the spine than many of our politicians and media types have shown so far.

In his outstanding book America Alone, Mark Steyn quotes Goh Chok Tong, the prime minister of Singapore in 2004, who, while on a visit to Washington, observed that "The key issue is no longer WMD or even the role of the U.N. The central issue is America's credibility and will to prevail." Exactly so, but, unfortunately, neither of those assets is much in evidence in either the Democrat party or the establishment media.

Mind-Numbed Robots

Liberals often pride themselves on how smart they are, while ridiculing the rubes who vote for conservatives. Blue staters are intelligent, red staters are yokels. At least that's the myth that liberals have comforted themselves with for the past six years. Yet frequently news reports like this one come along that blow the myth right out of the water and cause us to question whether liberalism is not itself a symptom of cognitive debility.

What other explanation can there be for such as we read in the following report?

HAGERSTOWN - A kindergarten student was accused earlier this month of sexually harassing a classmate at Lincolnshire Elementary School, an accusation that will remain on his record until he moves to middle school.

Washington County Public Schools spokeswoman Carol Mowen said the definition of sexual harassment used by the school system is, "unwelcome sexual advances, request for sexual favors and/or other inappropriate verbal, written or physical conduct of a sexual nature directed toward others." Mowen said that definition comes from the Maryland State Department of Education.

According to a school document provided by the boy's father, the 5-year-old pinched a girl's buttocks on Dec. 8 in a hallway at the school south of Hagerstown. Charles Vallance, the boy's father, said he was unable to explain to his son what he had done. "He knows nothing about sex," Vallance said. "There's no way to explain what he's been written up for. He knows it as playing around. He doesn't know it as anything sexual at all."

The incident was described as "sexual harassment" on the school form. School officials consider a student's age and the specific action when determining what administrative action to take, Mowen said.

Lincolnshire Principal Darlene Teach [Really?] and Mowen said they were unable to discuss he incident involving the Lincolnshire student. Teach said any student, regardless of grade level, can be cited for sexual harassment. "Anytime a student touches another student inappropriately, it could be sexual harassment," Teach said.

School administrators at a Texas school in November suspended a 4-year-old student for inappropriately touching a teacher's aide after the prekindergarten student hugged the woman. "It's important to understand a child may not realize that what he or she is doing may be considered sexual harassment, but if it fits under the definition, then it is, under the state's guidelines," Mowen said. "If someone has been told this person does not want this type of touching, it doesn't matter if it's at work or at school, that's sexual harassment."

The incident will be included in the boy's file while he remains at Lincolnshire, but Mowen said those files do not follow students when they move on to middle school. She described the incident as a "learning opportunity."

During the 2005-06 school year, 28 kindergarten students in Maryland were suspended for sex offenses, including sexual assault, sexual harassment and sexual activity, according to state data. Fifteen of those suspensions were for sexual harassment. During the 2005-06 school year, one Washington County prekindergarten student was suspended from school, and 12 of the county's kindergartners were suspended for various offenses, according to state data.

A four year old was suspended for inappropriate touching?Twenty eight kindergarten students were suspended for sexual harassment? How can a four year old inappropriately touch? How can kindergarten students sexually harass someone? What kind of people are these who are making the decisions to punish these children by labelling them some sort of sex offender, and do they have any insight at all into how four and five year-olds think? Do they really believe that children this young think in sexual terms at all?

Ms. Mowen considers writing a child up as a sexual harasser to be a "learning opportunity," but it's better described as the sort of sheer idiocy one has come to expect from people who are so brainwashed by mindless ideological dogma that they have absolutely no common sense. Liberal proprieties may demand that we punish a four, five, or six year old for pinching, as if they were sixteen or seventeen, but anyone with an IQ above the freezing point would perceive the utter foolishness of it.

Indeed, the only thing more astonishing than the punishment is the utterly vacuous rationale given to justify it. Like people straight out of a Franz Kafka novel, the sex nazis in Maryland have determined that what this child did fits the definition of sexual harassment and therefore must be treated as such, whether it really is or not.

In their stupid intransigence and bizarre eagerness to punish children just for being children, Ms. Teach and Ms. Mowen offer us, perhaps, the best possible argument for school choice.

Major Conversion

Scrapple Face has the scoop of the century. Al Qaeda's second in command (or, depending on the status of Osama's vital signs, #1) Ayman al-Zawahiri has converted to Christianity and gives his testimony in this video. It's a real shocker to hear him talk like this, but it warms the soul.

At least it does if you don't know Arabic and don't think about the fact that Scrapple Face is a master of satire.

Time's decision

Byron writes to defend Time Magazine's decision to select us all as Person of the Year. His defense can be read on our Feedback page, and, as usual, he makes a good case.

Significant Differences

Those who support open borders and unrestricted immigration like to remind us that we are a nation of immigrants and that we should not deny to others what was not denied to our ancestors. This is a specious argument for a number of reasons, and Pat Buchanan provides us with a few of them in his excellent book State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America. Buchanan notes that:

1. We have as many foreign-born people living in the U.S. today as came here in the first 350 years of our history. This is a tidal wave of immigration which is placing enormous stress on the cultural and social fabric of our cities and towns, especially in the southwest.

2. Most of of those who are coming are breaking in. They have no legal right to be here. Six million illegals were caught in 2006. That may only be a fraction of what actually made it past the border police. In 2006 there were as many illegals (12 to 20 million) inside our borders as all the Germans and Italians who ever came to this country.

3. Almost all immigrants, whether legal or illegal, come from cultures whose peoples have never before been assimilated into a First World nation. Most of our ancestors were from the same ethnic and cultural stock as the people who were already here. Many of today's immigrants have no particular sympathy for or loyalty to the European culture which has nurtured and sustained America. The founding documents of this country reflect European thinking and values and many of today's immigrants feel no attachment or allegiance to them.

4. There are strong pressures exerted on immigrants by their own communities and by our cultural elites not to assimilate. Unlike the social expectations which prevailed a century or more ago, today's multiculturalists are hostile to the idea of an American melting pot and disdain the idea, for example, that immigrants should be expected to learn English.

5. Among those arriving now many of them bring with them no desire to become Americans, to be one of us. Many come to work, others to exploit the welfare benefits of living in America, some come to prey upon Americans. When most of our ancestors arrived, on the other hand, they were not entitled to drink at the public trough. There was no public welfare. The immigrant communities themselves provided assistance to those of their number who needed it.

These are not insignificant differences. Immigration today is an almost completely different phenomenon than it was when our ancestors travelled to these shores. Immigration in the first 350 years of our history made us a stronger nation. Today it is threatening to undo us.

Simplistic Reportage

Reports in the media almost always depict the administration as resisting more troops in Iraq and the military leadership as wanting more but reluctant to buck former Secretary Rumsfeld's desire to keep our footprint small and lean. Well, apparently the media reports have once again proven themselves to be a little too simplistic.

It turns out that the administration is enthusiastic about putting more troops into Iraq and the Joint Chiefs are reluctant. The debate is apparently complex, but that's the point. The second guessers and military experts at the New York Times and elsewhere have till now painted the debate as a simple matter of the Bushies being unwilling to listen to their military people on the need for more troops when, in fact, things have been more complicated than that. We might even say that the media has "lacked nuance" in much of their reporting on this matter.

Read the article by Robin Wright and Peter Baker at the link.

Who Would You Pick?

Jason writes regarding the Time Magazine Person of the Year award:

What a lame excuse for a man of the year award. All that happened in 2006, and the editor's at TIME come up with that crock? They should be ashamed. And to think that CNN carried a 1-hr special on who should be picked, only to announce that it is "YOU."

I am curious. Who would the editors of Viewpoint pick for their person(s) of the year?

This is a very interesting question. The obvious answer, of course, is that it's George W. Bush. No one has had a greater influence on world events, for good or for ill, than has President Bush. But if we discount the president of the United States in our deliberation the choice gets more difficult. There are a couple of people that merit consideration, but rather than name them I'd like to survey you our readers and see what you think.

If you have a thought on this please submit your choice for person of the year through our speak up feature. Unlike Time Magazine's editors, though, who consider anyone who has exerted influence on world or national events no matter how pernicious that influence might have been, let's limit our choice to someone that we believe deserves the award because their efforts have advanced civilization and human welfare.

If we get any nominations we'll list them next week.

Liberal/Conservative

How liberal or conservative are you? You can go here to take a twenty question test to find out. My results were as follows:

Political Profile:

Overall: 85% Conservative, 15% Liberal
Social Issues: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal
Personal Responsibility: 75% Conservative, 25% Liberal
Fiscal Issues: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal
Ethics: 50% Conservative, 50% Liberal
Defense and Crime: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal

I really don't know how I got the 50/50 rating in ethics since I can think of only one ethical question to which I gave the typically liberal reply. The test makes me seem more conservative than I think I really am and maybe it's slanted to do that, I don't know. Anyway, take it yourself and see what you think.

HT: Prosthesis

Good Quote

"I'm interested in reconciling this phenomenal event -- the incarnation of God -- with Santa Claus and blue-light specials at Kmart and the weird preoccupation we have with buying a lot of junk and giving it to each other." Prosthesis.

The Differences Between Them

For those of our readers who may have a hard time distinguishing between the various breeds of Muslim, Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost provides us with a good summary of the main differences between Sunni and Shia.

In our opinion, the differences seem minor compared to what they share in common, i.e. a desire to convert the world by killing all infidels, if need be. Nevertheless, the distinctions between Sunni and Shia must be significant in their own eyes because when they aren't killing infidels they sure delight in killing each other.

Israel Should Have Attacked Syria

The founder of MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute), Meyrav Wurmser, believes Israel let down the U.S. by not attacking Syria. She is a leading "neo-con" who has lots of interesting things to say about the situation in the Middle East in an article in YNet News.

She believes, for instance, that the reason things are moving so slowly in Iraq is not because neo-cons had too much influence in the Bush administration, as has been alleged, but because they had too little.

Read what else she has to say, especially her rationale for an Israeli attack on Syria, at the link.

An Open Door

Sal Cordova at Uncommon Descent notes that the secularists are beginning to wake up to the fact that Judge Jones' ruling against the Dover school board a year ago is not the defeat for Intelligent Design that it has been touted to be.

The judge left the door wide open for teaching ID in philosophy, sociology, and religion classes. As Lauren Sandler says in her book Righteous:

[I]ntelligent design proponents keep quiet about the idea that [Judge] Jones's decision opens new legal support to teach their views in philosophy and religion classes. "We do not question that many of the leading advocates of ID have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors. Nor do we controvert that ID should continue to be studied, debated, and discussed...." Jones wrote, suggesting that intelligent design is a legitimate field of study outside biology class. This is a victory to an intellignt design movement....

There are a couple of problems, of course, from the point of view of one who wants students to learn both the evidences for evolution and the difficulties with a purely materialistic view of the development of the universe and of life. First, not every high school has a quality philosophy program and not many sociology teachers would be equipped to teach a unit on the sociological aspects of the controversy. Even in those schools which do have a philosophy elective, not every student takes the course.

Nevertheless, it is often the brightest students who do sign up for it, and it is these who would benefit most from hearing both sides of this issue presented. And, if these students are turned on to the topic, discussions of it will inevitably spill over into their AP science classes.

Perhaps there will come a day when many young people going into public education will be motivated to pursue a minor in philosophy and, when circumstances allow, offer a course in it in the schools at which they teach. Perhaps, too, the questions and challenges surrounding exclusively materialistic explanations for the origin of life, the origin of higher taxa, the origin of consciousness, and the fine-tuning of the cosmos will all find their way into the curriculum.

If so, students who enroll in such a course will be immeasurably benefitted from the experience.

Spit in Your Hands

Reader JB writes with regard to our post from last week titled Fix Bayonets:

Oh, to spit in your hands and lower the pike. Hinderaker has voiced what many conservative Americans must be thinking. To leave Iraq now without finishing the mission would be tragic indeed and seen by many as a loss. To continue our presence in Iraq without increasing our operational tempo would only drag matters out more so. To fail to punish nations or groups of people who support insurgency or terrorism would be willful neglect of our leaders and a crime. I agree with Hinderaker that our President should exercise due diligence and begin taking the fight to the enemy. I further agree with his use of the expression that bayonets should be fixed.

When [Joshua] Chamberlain stood on Little Round Top [Gettysburg] he knew that the battle was at a critical point (a decisive point where one side needed to begin to win, and one sided needed to begin to lose, a point which would decide the battle's outcome). Chamberlain and the 20th Maine were the far end of the flank. Should Chamberlain and the 20th fail they would have left open the backdoor to the Union line. Chamberlain did not allow an absence of powder and ball or able bodied men to influence his decision. Chamberlain did not stand down, retreat, displace, or withdraw.

Chamberlain instead took the fight to the enemy and then some. Chamberlain gave his orders and charged down the hill and closed on the Confederates like a swinging door. We all know the outcome and we all know about the medals that were won. What we should all take from this example is a lesson in the face of adversity. Bush should look at Chamberlain's example and close that swinging door. Bush has established the door and he has given us another Little Round Top. The American forces hold the high ground. The American forces should close this door once and for all. Fix bayonets, "W", fix bayonets!

I will add that I of course see nothing tactically or politically wrong with Bush increasing our force's operational tempo. I also have no problem with tactical air strikes against Iran or anyone else (Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis example). Bush cannot be re-elected and this matter needs to be solved and finished before Obama or Hillary has a chance to take office. God knows they won't fix bayonets, they won't do anything except blame Bush.

God bless and be with the men and women who will spit in their hands and lower that pike...

JB

Nifong Update

A couple of days ago we speculated that Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong had abused his power in the Duke rape case in such a fashion as to pretty much prosecute himself right out of a job. Now Bill sends word from North Carolina that this public servant may be investigated by the feds for his egregious conduct of the case and the blithe disregard he demonstrated for the young men whom he was determined to convict regardless of their guilt or innocence.

The 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant enjoined us to never treat other people as a means to an end but always only as ends in themselves. Mr. Nifong might do well to reflect on the wisdom of that advice. With luck he'll have plenty of time for reflection.

The Totalitarian Impulse

The following petition to be presented to Prime Minister Tony Blair is being circulated in the United Kingdom and has acquired so far about 900 signatures, among them that of Ian Barbour and Richard Dawkins:

In order to encourage free thinking, children should not be subjected to any regular religious teaching or be allowed to be defined as belonging to a particular religious group based on the views of their parents or guardians. At the age of 16, as with other laws, they would then be considered old enough and educated enough to form their own opinion and follow any particular religion (or none at all) through free thought.

In other words, these people are not content with merely indoctrinating their own children in atheistic materialism. They want to prevent others from teaching their children about theism under penalty of law. This would be an unconscionable abridgement of personal freedom, of course, and the sort of totalitarian measure that secularists resorted to with terrifying regularity throughout the twentieth century, but there's no need to be concerned that it would ever come to pass in 21st century Europe. The politicos in that spiritually impoverished continent are well-aware that their seething Muslim populations would undergo spontaneous combustion if it were ever seriously considered. Thus, it won't be.

Now if it were only Christians who would be affected, well, then, that might be an entirely different story.

Humbling Award

I am scarcely able to summon the words to announce that Time Magazine has selected me as their person of the year for 2006. It really is an astonishing honor, and I confess to being flabbergasted that the folks at Time have even heard of me let alone chose me as the recipient of such a wonderful prize. I'm truly humbled.

Of course, I should mention, in case you haven't heard, that the honor is diluted somewhat by the fact that they chose you, too. Yes, that's right. In fact, they chose everybody. Everybody is this year's person of the year. Sort of makes you proud to be an American, doesn't it?

Mystery Man

The thinness of the Democratic stable is illustrated by the fact that the two most talked about candidates for their party's nomination for president in 2008 are a one term senator, Hillary Clinton, and a two year senator, Barack Obama. Neither has ever been a governor and neither has really explained why voters should pull the lever for them. Yet they have been all but canonized by the media.

Bob Gorrell depicts how peculiar this phenomenon is:

Staring at the End of a Career

This should just about do it for the Durham District Attorney who refuses to drop charges against three Duke students accused of raping an "exotic" dancer:

The head of a private DNA laboratory said under oath today that he and District Attorney Mike Nifong agreed not to report DNA results favorable to Duke lacrosse players charged with rape.

Brian Meehan, director of DNA Security of Burlington, said his lab found DNA from unidentified men in the underwear, pubic hair and rectum of the woman who said she was gang-raped at a lacrosse party in March....Meehan said the DNA did not come from Reade Seligmann, David Evans, or Collin Finnerty, who have been charged with rape and sexual assault in the case.

Meehan struggled to say why he didn't include the favorable evidence in a report dated May 12, almost a month after Seligmann and Finnerty had been indicted. He cited concerns about the privacy of the lacrosse players, his discussions at several meetings with Nifong, and the fact that he didn't know whose DNA it was.

Under questioning by Jim Cooney, a defense attorney for Seligmann, Meehan admitted that his report violated his laboratory's standards by not reporting results of all tests.

Did Nifong and his investigators know the results of all the DNA tests? Cooney asked. "I believe so," Meehan said.

"Did they know the test results excluded Reade Seligmann?" Cooney asked. "I believe so," Meehan said.

Was the failure to report these results the intentional decision of you and the district attorney? Cooney asked. "Yes," Meehan replied.

Meehan's testimony differed from a statement Nifong made at the beginning of today's hearing. "The first I had heard of this particular situation was when I was served with this particular motion" on Wednesday, Nifong told the judge. After court, Nifong clarified his remarks to say that he knew about the DNA results.

"And we were trying to, just as Dr. Meehan said, trying to avoid dragging any names through the mud but at the same time his report made it clear that all the information was available if they wanted it and they have every word of it," Nifong said.

Joseph B. Cheshire V, a lawyer for Evans, said he was troubled by today's testimony. "If any of the lacrosse players were excluded, they simply wouldn't put it in the report," he said. "It raises some troublesome questions about (Nifong), who has an obligation to disclose exculpatory evidence and turn it over to the defense."

So Mr. Nifong had strong reason to believe that the alleged victim was concocting the whole story of her sexual assault at the hands of the Duke students, but chose, against the obligations of his office, not to make exculpatory evidence public.

If the events of this prosecution are as they seem then Mr. Nifong is one despicable human being. He has made these boys' lives a living hell for the past year, he has harmed them financially, caused their and their teammates' lacrosse season to be forfeit, and allowed their reputations to be completely ruined while all along knowing that he had no case against them. We may sincerely hope that when the charges against the Duke students are eventually thrown out, as they will be by any judge with even the slightest trace of human decency, these young men will be able to sue Nifong for every penny he owns.

Beneath Tasteless

Joy Behar gives us a glimpse of what passes for humor among a certain kind of liberal by suggesting that the Republicans somehow caused senator Tim Johnson's brain hemorrhage.

It's beneath tasteless, of course, to try to squeeze a cheap laugh out of a man's misfortune, but it's evidently not so far beneath as to be too low for Behar and her audience.

Types of Critics

Mike Gene at Telic Thoughts offers a taxonomy of the various species of critics of Intelligent Design. You'll find it interesting if you follow the ID/Darwinism controversy at all.